


sleep, creep

by syrupwit



Series: typical human courtship [2]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Denial, M/M, Showing Up On A Doorstep And Pretending To Be Mail-Order Spouse In Hope They'll Just Go With It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 23:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/pseuds/syrupwit
Summary: If Zim could sweat, he would.





	sleep, creep

It’s night, but Zim can’t sleep. If someone asked, he would say he doesn’t sleep, but that’s not true. He is perfectly capable of a process analogous to the human practice of sleep; he just prefers not to indulge in it. But, right now, he wants to.

To start, the bedroom is too warm. Despite multiple protests, Dib turned off the air-conditioning unit for the night, claiming he had to save electricity. A paltry breeze drifts through the open window, barely ruffling the bills and cryptid fact sheets tacked to Dib’s wall-length bulletin board. The air is thick and stifling, humming with cricket song. If Zim could sweat, he would.

Light seeps in from the gas station and convenience store signs across the street. The room—the bed, the sheets, Dib’s face—is illumed in shades of blue and tacky red. Dib lies on his back, breathing peacefully. His glasses are folded on the cardboard box that serves as a nightstand, so nothing obscures the smoothed-out lines of his sleeping expression, the soft edges of his temple and chin. It’s revolting.

Dib didn’t protest when Zim followed him instead of settling on the couch with GIR, and he seemed to have no compunctions about stripping down to his underwear for bed. It’s the type of situation that should fill Zim with preemptive triumph. For some reason, it doesn’t. For some reason, it makes him feel… something else, something he doesn’t want to analyze. Hence, the need for sleep. Sleep will tell him what to think.

In the three days since Zim showed up at Dib’s apartment masquerading as his mail-order spouse under a false name, uncomfortable things have been happening. First, there was the showdown with that fake cable provider; second, Zim’s near disintegration of Dib’s boss; then, an incident with GIR and a purloined letter. It’s hard to break a SIR unit from the habit of mail fraud, but that is not Zim’s major concern. What majorly concerns him is this apparent depth of feeling he’s developed towards Dib, when it should be the other way around.

Currently, Zim is curled on his side, the place where his human nose would be angled at Dib’s ribcage. He feels small, and he wants to cling to the other creature’s body. The rise and fall of Dib’s chest is within reach. Zim reaches, then reaches further. He sits up on his knees to reach further still, intent.

Even through Zim’s glove, the swell of Dib's bare stomach radiates heat. Zim, poking it, imagines blood rushing under the tender, defenseless flesh, pooling in the greater heat between Dib’s skinny thighs. He thinks of that sweet, pungent blood welling over his claws, drying sticky on his skin while the human writhes beneath him, helpless, desperate to—

Dib stirs. “Z—Miz? What are you doing?” he murmurs, voice thick with exhaustion.

Zim freezes. “Nothing.”

“You’re poking me.”

“No.” Zim snatches his hand behind his back.

Dib still peers at him, drowsy, sweet in his drowsiness. “Is something wrong? You’re breathing weird. And you’re kind of staring at me.”

“I am not,” Zim snaps, a trifle too harshly. They glare at each other for a moment.

“Whatever.” Dib turns on his side, removing his stomach from Zim’s reach. The curve of his back is… distracting. He has long limbs_—willowy_, the romance novels Zim researched for his plan might say, though the adjective is typically employed to describe female humans—and there’s an odd grace to the way his legs fold over each other, the tangle of his arms around his single, caseless pillow. 

Zim isn’t staring. He’s just thinking. Wanting to touch Dib is normal, obviously, and a sign that his plan is working. This feeling must be caused by pheromones, left over from the meat-beast’s growing, doomed attraction to Zim. Ha! Such a pity for him, that Zim can never reciprocate his pathetic urges. Human romance, human sex… Irkens are not made that way. And for good reason.

It’s laughable, really, the idea of two creatures like them together. How would it even work? It couldn’t. There’s no way it could work.

Could it?

Zim thinks, and thinks, and thinks.

Dib, eventually, snores.


End file.
